Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday October 14, 2011 @12:47PM
from the yes-he-looks-very-dangerous dept.

Mightee sends in this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"The Stockholm District Court sentence against Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm was finalized today after he failed to appear at the Court of Appeal. Svartholm, also known as Anakata online, did not appear at the appeal trial last year because he was hospitalized in Cambodia and later went missing. The Court of Appeal has now decided to finalize the initial verdict of one year jail time and a fine of $1.1 million."

Nobody knows where he is. He probably fled the country and will create a new identity for himself.

Here's to hoping, anyway.

I don't think anyone really believed he was sick in Cambodia. The only proof we have of that is his mother's word. Seems to me like he knew the end was near and hopefully took his earnings with him to start a new life

That's what I'd do. Heck I'd say it was Cambodia and the flee from there to some other country. A big one with lots of jungles. With a decent amount of cash it's easy to build a nice big house in the middle of a jungle and live comfortably, I've seen it done (including one guy who has a Lotus Elise at his place, and has to drive it a good kilometer or so over a rocky trail to get it to the nearest sorta-paved road, LOL)

Until the local warlord/cop/strongman figures out who the stupid white kid with all the cash is and what he's running from.

Then they will come asking for larger and larger bribes to keep quiet. Refuse? Why, they might just take it from you, throw you in the local jail with some unpleasant locals, or drop a dime on you to the embassy/consulate of the country looking for you.

Either way, it's an unhappy ending for you, your fortune and your freedom.

The point was that the local thugs are likely to have More Guns (and come expecting resistance) than Mr. Svartholm (or any of us) -- unless we were to also spend Large Money on maintaining our own private security force. They also have a more extensive foothold in the area (informants, blackmail on local people) than we would which would make it easier for them to get cheaper mercenaries than we can, I expect. Even then, it's still only a cost/benefit analysis away from some local warlord saying, "Hmm, his

You do realize it has a stainless/aluminum unibody, a 200hp+ high-revving 4cyl and can make a decent rally car?

It's far from an ideal surface, especially with the factory settings, but it can be done. Heck I have to drive my little sports coupe over much worse roads with track-set coilovers to get within a few miles of the track.

That's not true. He could have gotten an std from a ladyboy companion.

That's bullshit. I've had my fair share of ladyboy fun and generally it's almost impossible to get serious STD like HIV on the receiving end of a blowjob. Of course it's a good idea to have a condom when having intercourse, but if you're just looking for a blowjob then there's no problem. The change of getting serious STD is 0.0000001%.

It depends on your definitions of "only" and "STD".Which in part is culture dependent. Some diseases like mono is considered an STD in some countries, but not others. And some, like warts, can be transferred without intercourse.

In North Korea, prison cells would probably be better than college dorms. At least in prison they feed you (otherwise they wouldn't be able to use you as slave labor for whatever project the "dear leader" wants next)

depends on your perspective, the US prison cells look like upscale college dorms compared to the ones in North Korea

Actually I'm willing to bet that North Korean prisons are nicer than American ones. Remember that guy who had so much fun torturing innocent iraqis in Abu Ghraib? He used to be a US prison guard. Also North Korean prisoners probably don't rape each other. Even in American prisons sexual assaults are usually a racial thing (black on white or hispanic on white). I've also heard that Swedish jails are actually pretty nice. And rape-free.

In the UK (London) our rooms get cleaned. Well not for free, it's included in the rent. That's one of the reasons I don't live in college any more. The cleaner often came in when I was sleeping/drunk, and if I wasn't there, she sometimes knocked over my stuff. My neighbour left some coins (remember, our smallest banknote is about US$8) on his desk and they were gone when he got back.
I never noticed my room noticeably cleaner after the maid had come. And one day when I caused a bit of a mess, I asked if I

True, that. But, you know, punishment is barbaric and didn't ever do anybody any good.

I know it is in our nature and for example I feel instinctively that want to punish our fascist minister of education with a kick in the penis and/or teeth whenever he lays down his old populist, military anti-academical/philosophical/human bullshit tripe, but punishment, however sweet, is not right. The wrongdoers can not help themselves. As a civilized society we should just prevent them from doing harm.

Somalia would be a terrible place to flee to. Any government (or corporation, why not) could come and abduct you with a blackhawk (as long as none of the militias manage to shoot them down) and the little government-controlled compound in the capital won't know shit, and even if they did, nobody cares about their little pipsqueak government.

However, the US (or anyone) waltzing into Cambodia and Doing What They Want makes the world take notice, as then all of their neighbors (or anyone without a nuke program?) wonders what will happen if someone decides to hide in THEIR country. I imagine it'd make a poor diplomatic impression on our friends (or Sweden's friends, in this case) if one were to act in a manner which pretty much explicitly says "We don't care about your sovereignty". We caught flak for that when taking out Bin Laden, and justifie

...which is the only reason why one of the four was prosecuted to begin with, the guy who was a decade of two older and basically just owned the ISP that employed one of the others. He is rich, the other three, who were the ones actually involved with The Pirate Bay, have no money. Guess who will have to pay the damages if the supreme court appeal fails?

Guess who will have to pay the damages if the supreme court appeal fails?

For him there is no appeal now, the verdict is final. Which I think with 99% probability means we'll never hear from him again because he's either dead or disappeared, I won't speculate in which but I'd be extremely surprised if he should ever reappear.

If he is fleeing, it's more likely fleeing the jail than fine. Rich or not, a nerd is a nerd... somehow I doubt he would do very well in jail, and he probably agrees. Even a Swedish jail, which I imagine is rather less full of beatings than the US approach of cramming people in like sardines to keep costs down.

As a Swedish resident I disagree. While I would certainly not want to go to jail, I wouldn't fear the time there, and I'm a 60kg geek that probably couldn't hold my own against a 12 year old girl.A prison sentence is far from a luxury resort, but in general in prison violence is low here. Lacking a decent net connection (and being disconnected would be a terrible thing indeed) I'd spend my time in the library, reading up on what I'm curious about, or simply ploughing through the classics I've missed. I doubt I'd have much trouble with other inmates.A million dollar debt though - that would destroy my life.

I've always felt that one of the best ways to judge a country and a culture is by how they treat their prisoners. Sweden is definitely one of the more civilized countries in the world. Too bad about these silly US bought laws.

I don't think that you can use bankruptcy to avoid paying legal judgements. That is to say (IANAL), I don't think you can in the US, and don't believe you can in other countries either. I expect a bankruptcy would still leave him saddled with many years of garnished wages, if anything.

Pirate Bay was a lot smaller in 2006 and they had mostly adult ads, not the type of ads they have now. They also didn't employ as good shell company structure with their Seychelles company as they do now.

The income with torrent sites is currently around $50 per 1000 unique visitors, mostly from toolbar (those "download from fast server now"), usenet and vpn provider ads. TPB currently has global Alexa rank #84. Quantcast currently estimates TPB gets 200k unique visitors per day [quantcast.com], and that is only US traffic. They get huge amount of traffic everywhere from the world. But just from that US traffic alone, TPB probably makes around 200000*(50/1000) = $10 000 per day.

That translates to $3 650 000 per year, almost four million dollars. And then you also have to add traffic and income from all the other countries apart from US, which probably brings the income close to ten million dollars a year.

Posted anonymously because I have also ran a torrent site. That means, I also know the kind of income such get from ads.

By the comparison to the Aitmatov (?) quote, I didn't mean to imply that he came from a poor background, because I don't know about that and since his name is actually Donald Duckishly aristocratic to a swede. What I meant was that I felt he is (or at least was) true to his... roots as an information freedom-fighter.

Also, I didn't just happen by him once, but a few times - on the streets of the "ghetto" (as far as we hav

If the founder in question here was making huge numbers off TPB a few years ago (2008, maybe), it didn't show in his wardrobe, hairstyle or choice of place to crash or his mode of transportation.

Maybe he was just playing it smart by not flaunting his money. Either that, or he was dumb and got screwed out of the money somebody else was making. There's no way Pirate Bay wasn't raking in the cash given all their views.

There are many ways to start a new life somewhere else though, web admins can work from anywhere with a wire to the www and make money. The whole case is BS though since piratebay is still up and running, what are they trying to prove here? That they can sentence people whenever they feel like it?

I love how when the courts get bad PR, nothing happens, when a company gets bad PR they go out of business. HMMMM

Basic intimidation. It's the standard way to enforce a law when there are far too many violators to prosecute even a tiny fraction. Pick a few prominent examples, and then utterly destroy their lives. That will serve to scare many of the others straight.

Basic intimidation. It's the standard way to enforce a law when there are far too many violators to prosecute even a tiny fraction....

And that worked out so well during prohibition now didn't it...?

All this does is breed contempt for the law which is evident from both your take on this and the revenue TPB is supposedly getting. When you try to regulate a natural human activity that has been with us since the age of caves or even earlier, you should expect to be both ignored and ridiculed.

It doesn't go to RIAA, it goes to record labels. Those record labels who supported and lend money to the artists to make and record their songs, supported them, advertised them and handled distribution for them. Of course the record label needs to get it's investment back, otherwise they would go bankrupt.

You run a (profitable) torrent tracker and you take vacations in third-world asian countries?

Maybe he wanted to see Angkor Wat [wikipedia.org], maybe he wanted to see unspoiled jungles, maybe because the Cambodian people are really friendly, or because he wanted to try the food and experience the culture.

There are plenty of good reasons why people vacation in south-east Asia (and, admittedly, some shady ones). I've known lots of people who have been to Thailand and Cambodia and Vietnam for vacations... I'm just not willi

As an American who has been to Cuba I can tell you that bonus #1 isn't necessarily true. As for bonus #2, the United States hardly has a monopoly on obnoxious tourists. Last time I was in Cairo a series of Greek tourists were being kicked out for using the museum as their personal climbing wall, and outside a group of Japanese tourists asked to take my picture confusing me (and my olive complexion) as an Egyptian.

Why go to Cuba when you can go to The Dominican, Jamaica, or for that matter pretty much any other Caribbean island?

But if he did go to one of those places you'd be asking him the same question. There's no particular reason *not* to go to Cuba. It's a big Caribbean island with its own unique culture. For an American it also has the extra plus of being forbidden by our insane government. Forbidden fruit is always sweeter. It's also the only place in the world that I know of where an ugly geek can rent/lease a girlfriend. At least you used to be able to. You can't even do that in Thailand. There are also not many better pl

You may or may not be under the misconception that we don't also have lot's of people from all over here in Sweden (as an example).

The ratios of coordinates at which nearby persons parents (or parents parents and so on) initiated their chains of chemical reactions that resulted in the hominidae that are you and me and those around us may differ significantly (like I don't think I've met a Cuban in my hood), but this particular suburb of Stockholm, Sweden is very much diverse. Surely 100 or 150 plus nation

Yep, Cambodia isn't really that safe. It's much safer in Thailand for example. However, I go to Cambodia 3-4 times a year to renew my Thai visa and stay there a couple a weeks, but it always feels kind of unsafe. And last time I was there hundreds of people died on that Phnom Penhs bridge when it got too crowded. If you have to go to hospital, you really don't want to go to Cambodian hospital anyway - every foreigner should try to get to either to Thailand or Singapore in that case, and it's touted everywhe

c) Actually they are quite friendly, but only in a shallow, looking-for-a-chance-to-rip-you-off friendly. Many people don't see through the false surface friendliness however until they get burned. Of course once you actually live there you can make real friendly like anywhere else. Just never talk to anyone who approaches you first.

d) Agreed. There is nothing special about the weather. It's the culture that is special, or rather, unique. Not in a good or bad way. Just different.

Last time I checked, you dont need a tracker site to get a.torrent file because you can just use a magnet link.Although then you have the situation where you need a site to collect magnet links (and its likely that big-movie-studio-favoring courts will consider magnet links just as infringing as.torrent files)

Yeah, but there is a nice extradition agreement between there and many countries like the US, EURO block, and elsewhere since they all have their troops there trying to keep the country together. He could try his hand in the autonomous regions, but if you are not a muslim (and of the correct sect), you had better start learning....

And you think there is copyright legislation in Cambodia? Obviously you've never been to the Russian Market in Phnom Penh. Cambodia is actually a pretty nice place. I wouldn't mind living there. And is there any other place where you can see 2 adults, 3 children, and a dog all riding on the same motorbike? Frankly I envy him. With that kind of money you could live like a king there until the end of your days. The language is hard though. No tones, but lots of difficult phonemes.

They are not taken down. The site was down a couple of days after the raid that started the whole thing (back in June 2006!), but has been up ever since with the odd downtime for planned maintainance or technical screwups. It's just run by different people.

All of that chest-beating on their site about takedown notices, and when they actually _get_ taken down their co-founder runs off to a foreign country and hides to avoid the consequences, scurrying away from the lights like a cockroach.

Um, those letters on the site make it pretty clear he's a pirate. Pirates pull crazy schemes to avoid jail. Or did you not download Pirates of the Carribean on TPB?;)

What does being a martyr achieve in this case? It wont unite the pirates.

No, far better to reassert to the authorities that they do not control people in the digital age like they used to, that chasing pirates is laughably futile and that it's better to work with them and provide them with reasonable content at reasonable prices than against them in pointless litigation that's cost them far more pursuing than they'll ever hope to get back from it.